Tag: Nominees

Update: It’s already here…

“Orderly and secure fashion” v. 1st amendment rights:The SCOTUS case involving Domineque Ray, a Muslim death row inmate and his request for an iman at his side during his execution should have been an easy lift. The Alabama Dept. of Corrections’ policy banning all but Christian clergy (what?!) in the execution chamber is blatantly unconstitutional. Alabama knew Ray’s faith since he was first imprisoned. Ray, however, didn’t learn of their exclusionary policy until a date arbitrarily decided to be “too late”. On a 5-4 vote, the Federalist Society members of the court put a state’s interest in keeping a tidy schedule over the 1st amendment rights of a minority prisoner. No matter what your views on capital punishment, or Ray’s guilt, this is a dangerous swipe against religious equality.

Action: Call against these judicial nominees!

Last Thursday, the Judiciary Committee advanced the nominations of 44 of Trump’s nominees to the main Senate floor. creep through the Judiciary Committee like a slow-growing cancer. You may think this issue doesn’t concern you because they don’t represent your area. Think indivisible, people! It’s within these horrors that Trump will be looking for his next Kavanaugh. We are all connected!CALL!

Action: Call against these judicial nominees!

Today, 40 terrible nominees who do not represent the values of the majority of Americans, will begin to creep through the Judiciary Committee like a slow-growing cancer. You may think this issue doesn’t concern you because they don’t represent your area. Think indivisible, people! It’s within these horrors that Trump will be looking for his next Kavanaugh. We are all connected!CALL!

Minimal script: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want Sen. [___] to know that she/he has my support to stop, in any way possible, this assembly line of inappropriate judicial nominees and the assault on the blue slip process and time periods for examining nominees.

View of activists Anne Koedt and Carol Hanisch as they hold a banner that reads ‘Don’t Cry, Resist’ during a ‘Legalize Abortion’ demonstration in Times Square , March 1968.

We’ve had Sunday to mourn a loss. We KNEW there would be setbacks along the way. But unlike an actual battlefield, OUR TROOPS ARE STILL HERE! And we stand ready to march into voting booths and take power away from the criminals who’ve scrambled into our leadership.

In the meantime, Mitch McConnell thinks we’re sobbing into our sheets and is trying to push these new atrocities-in-suits through. Let’s surprise him…

Action #1 – Vote NO on Jeffrey Bossert Clark for Top Environmental Prosecutor

Clark was prominently involved in industry challenges to the EPA’s “endangerment finding” that set the scientific basis for all subsequent attempts to regulate greenhouse gases. Of course, Trump to make him the DOJ’s top environmental lawyer!

Minimal Script: I am calling from [zip code] to ask Senator [___] to vote NO on Jeffrey Bossert Clark for Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ Environmental and Natural Resources Division.

Additional Script if you want: Clark is a climate change denier whose opposition to environmental regulations and protections makes him unsuitable for the role of enforcing America’s environmental laws.

Reading:

The Sierra Club states that Clark is unfit to lead the DOJ Environmental and Natural Resources Division. (sierraclub)

She would like a lifetime position on the Federal Bench in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

It’s hard to imagine a worse judicial nominee than Wendy Vitter. She’s pushed fake science as fact when it suits her anti-abortion agenda, for example, championing baseless theories linking abortion and contraception to cancer and infertility. She won’t even say her opinion on Brown vs. Boardof Education decision out loud. She has stated anti-immigrant views and has worked in a DA’s office which was accused of multiple instances of unconstitutional behavior.

More script if you want it:Her extreme fact-free anti-abortion views endanger our health, and her shocking refusal to disavow the segregation of schools puts her far outside the judicial mainstream. Vitter is a dangerous and unqualified nominee who shouldn’t be let anywhere near a federal bench.

First – Need some borrowed energy?

Join us! Check out our “Local Events – Resist” listing. Here’s some things happening soon!
– Today we’re having a postcard party. We’ll be listing more of these soon.
– January 7th, we’re having our first canvassing and registration party of 2018. We’re doing this almost every week, so come out. You’ll always get training and work alongside experienced people.

If you’ve ever thought about joining in a phonebank but found the whole idea really scary, there is a conference call training session TONIGHT (Jan. 4th) at 7 pm PST to help break it down for us phone-phobic people!

1. Lend your courage to our Senators in the fight for DACA

Senator Feinstein almost reneged on her promise. Your calls made her stand up. Never underestimate the power of calling your Democratic legislators. Start revving up her courage and willpower starting today! Use this short script below and give her a “welcome back” call.)

Minimal Script: I’m calling from [zip code] to urge Congressperson/Senator [___] to require the addition of a clean Dream Act as a condition of any spending bill until the Dream Act passes.

More script if you need it:Every day that Congress fails to act, 122 Dreamers lose their DACA status and become deportable. A vote on a continuing resolution without the Dream Act, is a vote to deport Dreamers.

2. Another fox in the henhouse. Ask our Senators to stop this.

The U.S. Census Bureau is the agency that determines the allocation of representatives and how political districts are drawn. So the Deputy Director this bureau should NOT be a guy named Thomas Brunell, who wrote a un-American, anti-democratic book called “Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections are Bad for America”. Duh! There was enough stink to keep him from becoming head of the bureau, but now the GOP is trying to stick him in a position that doesn’t require Senate confirmation. (We’ll talk about the proposed Census questions tomorrow.)

So here’s the scoop…

They’ve got all the official biographies of the candidates listed here. Frankly, they are very dull reading.

However, a least 11 of the bios are missing some REALLY INTERESTING BITS! Both E&E News and Scientific American are warning us about them in this article and this one.

11 of the nominees are climate change deniers!

And they are each angling for an important scientific advisory job with the power to corrupt our country’s environmental legislation for years.

“The Science Advisory Board (SAB) is a scientific/technical advisory committee. The objective of the SAB is to provide independent advice and peer review on the scientific and technical aspects of environmental issues to the EPA’s Administrator. While the SAB reports to the EPA Administrator, congressional committees specified in Environmental Research Demonstration and Development Authorization Act may ask the EPA Administrator to have the SAB provide scientific advice on a particular issue.” (EPA)

As McConnell was signing off last night from his colossal failure to pass any GOP healthcare bill, he mentioned in passing that he was now going to concentrate on getting nominees passed. So we should probably concentrate on getting them stopped.

Trump has presented us with soooo many inappropriate choices, so let’s just alphabetize them for convenience. If we’ve missed any, please contact us in the comments.

David J. Apol – New Head of the Office of Government Ethics. (Missed this one – he’s in).
He’s already been named by President Trump last week as the new head of the Office of Government Ethics, has repeatedly clashed with colleagues over his career at the agency as he sought to roll back or loosen ethics requirements on federal employees, including those in the White House, three former senior officials at the agency said.